Breaking Barriers in the Black Belt: Hale County College and Career Academy

Two years ago Rural Schools Collaborative (RSC) highlighted the Hale County College and Career Academy (HCCCA), which supports two of the ten Black Belt schools in the GRAD Partnership, a national initiative aimed at fostering student success systems in schools. HCCCA focuses on Career and Technical education, providing vital workforce development skills to students from both Hale County and Greensboro High Schools. The early efforts to build student success systems at HCCCA focused on the school’s Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) program, which is led by Mrs. Thomasina Thomas.

The RSC team recently went back to the the HCCCA Campus outside of Greensboro, AL, to learn more about how the JAG Program is continuing to utilize student success systems and GRAD Partnership resources to remove barriers for at-risk students and send them to graduation ready for either college or a career. Joining RSC on the tour was Dr. Annah Rogers, an assistant professor at the University of West Alabama and the Black Belt GRAD Partnership lead, who collaborates with Black Belt schools on their student success system journey as part of RSC’s GRAD Partnership Rural Cohort. The University of West Alabama anchors RSC’s Black Belt Regional Hub.

The JAG program at HCCCA offers a lot for its students: training around resumes and job interviews, assistance towards getting their drivers license, public speaking skills, volunteerism and service, access to regional and national JAG competitions, and, of course, concrete skills the students can take into the workforce. At the center of those efforts is the JAG Cafe, which began in part with funds that HCCCA received as part of their participation in the GRAD Partnership. At the JAG Cafe, students work in teams to take orders and work the cash register, prepare drinks and light bites, and practice their customer service skills.

For students who go through their time in school with unstable home environments, face severe poverty, or have not found success in more traditional classrooms, HCCCA and JAG provide an opportunity for uplifting themselves on their path to graduation. “And so by being in a rural area, it actually puts the students here at a slight disadvantage to [students] in the city…, all of our students, they have never had work experience before. Now that's the purpose of creating a JAG Cafe, actually helping them overcome the barriers,” describes Mrs. Thomas.

The JAG Cafe usually takes seven of the students to run, and they rotate shifts, although Mrs. Thomas notes that students must demonstrate responsibility in the classroom before they are able to work. They take drink orders from their fellow students, teachers, and others who may be stopping onto campus. On the day the RSC team visited, the cafe was bustling with customers, and the students preparing drinks and food were hard at work. Moreover, Mrs. Thomas has used some GRAD Partnership funds to provide students a food safety certification, alongside the soft skills they foster through their shifts.

Mrs. Thomas describes the bigger purpose behind the cafe: Just making sure that they have those skills to understand that even though in here, you're going to be able to use those skills and transfer those skills into the real world. So anything that they look at as miniscule, I would tell them, it's small now, but later it's going to be really big. So making sure that every moment is a teachable moment,” she continues, “my biggest goal is just being able to expose them to as much as I possibly can.”

One JAG student and a veteran cafe worker, Lashawnte, is a third year student in JAG who heard about the program from a friend. “I thought, ‘that sounds interesting since it's a student-led program, and I never had a problem with talking with people and traveling’. So I was like, ‘this would probably be the class for me to get ready for the future.’” She notes that the program has helped her significantly in her communication skills, and made her a more confident public speaker. Kelyn, a first year student in JAG, agrees, describing that working in the cafe has led to him “being more open to people, and knowing to say and what to do when in a certain situation.”

Lashawnte credits her success in the program to the school’s teachers, Mrs. Thomas in particular. “It’s definitely easier to know that the teachers care, because they'll be on you. They'll ask you, like, ‘what can we do?’ We have after school programs, and we have tutors that come with us… [Mrs. Thomas] makes sure she gets our potential out one way or another. She's an awesome teacher. She's very patient with her students. She's very understanding of them, and she understands where they're coming from.”

The JAG competitions are another way that Mrs. Thomas sees the program removing barriers in her students' educational paths. Many have never left the county, but through JAG they have been able to travel to Birmingham and Indianapolis for the competitions, presenting their business model and cafe enterprise. Lashawnte found these to be particularly enriching experiences: “We take our JAG Cafe to the competitions. Last year, we placed at nationals… it was nice getting to know the people… and the TED Talks that they give us would really encourage us to move forward and try our best.”

At the root of the JAG program’s success are the strong, supportive relationships between teachers and students, which continue even after graduation. Mrs. Thomas texts all of her students monthly to see how they are doing, and will help them with anything they may need, be it a blouse for a job interview or just words of encouragement. “So when I talk to our students, everything we do in here is for a meaningful purpose outside of here. So being able to publicly speak, being able to advocate for yourself is the biggest thing. Learning those skills when you enter a room, those are the foundations that we’re laying in the classroom.”

Rural Schools Collaborative would like to thank Dr. Annah Rogers for her facilitation of our visit to the Alabama Black Belt, and for her innovative leadership to support the ten participating GRAD Partnership schools in Alabama and Mississippi. Additionally, we would like to thank Dr. Marlon Murray, Director of the HCCCA, for welcoming us into his school.